Entertainment

GeoCities to Shutdown; What Was GeoCities, You Ask?

Before Twitter, before Facebook, before MySpace - heck, even before Friendster, there was a service known as GeoCities. For those who grew up on the Net in the 90s, it was about as close as you get to what we know today as social networks. It was essentially an organization of like-minded user-created homepages in different topical communities like sports, entertainment, and tech.

Yahoo bought the company near the peak of the dotcom bubble for more than $3 billion, which, along with the rise of alternative services, quickly spelled the end of GeoCities' prominence. Today, it appears that the end of GeoCities is being made official, as Yahoo has closed the service to new accounts and posted an FAQ with some details as to how the shutdown will go.

It's certainly not surprising that GeoCities is shutting down, as Yahoo has been in cost-cutting mode for months and the service would seem to have little fit in its current business. The company offers a fairly generic explanation of the move: "We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year."

If you’re not familiar with GeoCities, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive overview of its rise and fall. But if you are familiar with it, it’s official end is certainly a bit nostalgic. I can still remember the URL of my GeoCities page (a Geocities Page of the Day, no less!), though somewhere between Yahoo acquiring the company and me going to college, it disappeared. In any event, share your favorite GeoCities memories in the comments!

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